On the one hand it's annoying. On the other hand there is a serious balance issue when the tank's main gun is worse than its support weapon.

Yeah the machine gun is great, but it's really too great. I'm not sure about removing the bonus entirely though. Maybe drastically reducing it would have been fine

And while it's truly that the tank is bad in the end game it's awesome when you get it. What is needed to make it stay competitive a bit longer is some research to improve its armor. Or even better a vehicle grid and modular armor inserts or shields

This. Oh my god this. The fact that *power armor* is upgradable and tanks *aren't* is as perplexing as it is infuriating. Seriously. Personal shields, personal lasers, why can I have a *fusion reactor* strapped to my back but can't use it to power tanks and vehicles?

How's this for easy: let the tank turret *be a turret* that you put in an empty slot? And yeah, that means there should totally be a "tank cannon turret" that uses shells instead of bullets. Like have 2 turret slots to install a turret into a tank and then just switch them out for your playstyle; cannon and machine gun, laser and flame thrower, artillery and cannon, *go nuts*.
Heck, you could even do crazy stuff like put a roboport or radar in one or both of the two slots!

The fact that biters can set way points and auto attack in groups and we *we can't* have a group of automated tanks go to a way point and wreck stuff always rubbed me the wrong way. The point of factorio is to automate stuff... that's the thing with logistics bots. The artillery turret/wagon was a step in the right direcrion, but the cold hard fact is that we have turrets, we have logistics pathfinding, and yet we have to manually drive tanks. Ugh.

I guess I can agree that the tank machine gun was a little too strong, but I think its other weapons are too weak. The cannon is slow as hell. And the flamethrower is just... I don't even know what it's for. Why doesn't it set things on fire like personal and turret flamethrowers too? It's downright weird that this one flamethrower weapons works differently from the others. I occasionally use it when I'm getting swarmed, but I haven't really been able to convince myself it's really the idea weapon even in that case.

The best weapon for killing trees is pressing "W" on your keyboard. Also you can throw grenades out of the tank so a weapon dedicated to not killing biters is kind of questionable.

Flame throwers in general have a crazy balance because the fire sticker DEBUFF deals 95% of the damage. Direct damage for the flame thrower doesn't exist, and since the tank flamer doesn't have the 3000 damage debuff its low damage becomes brutally obvious.

I've played deathworld marathon twice to the rocket+, so I've got a fair bit of experience with the tank balance at it's most extreme. For me, the tank had three phases before ultimately being completely overwhelmed by other end game options:

In all of these cases the "primary weapon" of the tank was just for shooting down nests slightly faster, mass killing of biters was done with the poison/lasers. This is because the machine gun, even with it's +100% damage, is pretty weak against blue biter hordes which is when you get the tank on deathworld marathon. Flamethrower was the only thing that really helped with mopup, only because I was using flamethrower turrets and researched flame bonus a bit. You'd think upgrading to uranium bullets would increase the firepower a lot since it's triple damage, but I found it had little effect when I tried just using regular bullets instead: the laser storm is that insanely good and only diminishes when you're facing .98+ evolution

Nerfing machine gun is probably only going to mean ramming the nests as a poison tank, and letting the lasers shooting the nests as a laser tank. I don't necessarily disagree with the idea, but if that's gonna happen, really the cannon needs yet another buff. The research bonuses really aren't good enough and come way, way, way too late Not to mention the piercing issue: IIRC, while you could shoot a nest specifically with the machine gun, cannons frequently lost momentum due to biters being in the way. IMO infinite piercing would be nice

It does feel like on overnerf in any case: piercing rounds without additional bonuses beyond basic bullet damage (gun turret research or 0.16 tank bonus) basically do no damage to blue biters due to damage reduction.

Last edited by greep on Sun Jan 20, 2019 6:11 pm, edited 7 times in total.

I'd prefer buffing the cannon to nerfing the MG. In real life, the effective range of a tank's main cannon is ballpark 4000m, while the machine gun maxes out around 600-1000m. So the cannon should have a much greater range IMHO, at least twice that of the MG.

I just tested this out again, because I remember writing off the tank's main cannon as being completely useless. I was remembering that the tank cannon only had one range, and that was what it fired at regardless of where you put the cursor. That's not actually true, because I did find you can shoot shells even closer to yourself than where I was aiming.

You're 100% correct that the range of those shells is the biggest issue with the cannon. You have to shoot them at 100% range because the area of effect is big enough you can definitely hit yourself with the explosion. I just did a quick test and the effect range is a radius number, so I was able to blow up 10 tiles wide. But the tank can only shoot 30 tiles in front of it, so that means that you will damage 5 tiles closer to the tank. Unless you're completely stationary, 25 tiles is nothing to cross, and if you have any turret delay your tank can move those 25 tiles before the explosion even occurs. If there is any delay at all and you were already aiming at max range, the tank is no longer capable of hitting the target where you were aiming. So you basically are forced to either sit 100% still, aim and shoot, or you have to aim at a target that you are moving towards so you don't out range your turret while you are driving.

I posted in here a while ago (pg. 1), but I feel the need to provide more input given that most people seem to be suggesting the tank is, perhaps outside of it's currently +100% damage MG, pretty much a niche option at best. From my own fairly extensive experience use the tank (mostly in a 140 hr. long game in 0.15, where it and most of the rest of the combat mechanics were as they are now in the current stable 0.16), this is not true. The tank is quite powerful, though perhaps not on par with a fully kitted out Power armor Mk2 setup.

A lot of posters here seem to not understand how to effectively use the tank cannon (it's a really good weapon if you use the right tactics with it). The best strategy I found with the tank cannon was to circle-strafe around the base you want to decimate with it. By staying moving, you could generally avoid getting hemmed in by biters (the few that manage to get in your way will probably fail to stop you in your tracks if you're moving at or even near full speed). This also serves to greatly reduce the rate that your tank is taking damage from biters (really helpful once behemoths start to become common), as most of them will spend most of their time chasing you instead of wailing on you. The tank cannon's range means that you can do this from outside of the reach of small and medium sized worms (big ones match your range, and should be your first targets unless they are much deeper in than the closest spawners). Until behemoths start showing up in appreciable numbers, you can reliably clear even fairly large bases this way without even a personal roboport with construction bots and repair kits to repair the tank, (It will take some damage, but with 2000 hp and its appreciable resistances it should survive just fine) or the added firepower of PLDs. HE shells have the downside that they they can splash damage the tank itself if they hit nearby enemies, but they also do more damage and a good part of that damage is in area damage, so they are better for clearing things quickly, but a bit less 'safe' when the biters and spitters get between you and the spawners you want to destroy, the regular shells are also more likely to penetrate through to the spawners, so both shell types have their uses, though HE seemed to me to be the overall better of the two shell types.

The one thing on the tank I wish was better was the flamethrower. It's short range of 9 is fair, but the fact that, unlike your personal flamethrower, it can't light thing on fire feels pretty terrible and really limits its effectiveness unnecessarily (I think I recall the devs decided to limit it like this because they feared it would be OP much as the Flamethrower had been in the 0.13 and to a lesser extent 0.14 days, but the changes they made to it and addition of fire resistance to enemies took care of that problem). In my opinion, all that's needed is for tank flamethrower to not have this limitation and it should fill a nice niche of being the best tool for 'cleaning off the biters' at the end of stomping a base with the tank.

Regarding the tank MG. With the +100% bonus it's utterly ridiculous (partly because this bonus is a multiplier, meaning it stacks multiplicatively with the bonus from Bullet Damage research). With just Piercing ammo and the cheaper/more basic upgrades it was still very efficient at killing big biters despite their physical resistance (which was being more than countered by the bonus alone). With Uranium ammo it made even the cannon seem laughable in terms of the insane levels of firepower it provides: seriously...without doing any space science research it could reach 105.6 damage per bullet with a fire rate of up to 37.5 (with max bullet shooting speed) bullets/second; that's an insane amount of DPS, and with such a high damage per shot, it largely ignored biter flat resistances to boot).

I disagree. The 9 range quickly becomes 5 range when the tank moves forward. There isn't much point in giving the tank a tree killer when the tank itself drives through trees like nothing. Give the flamer to the car instead.

The only problem with fire was that damn debuff which does 3000 damage. It's a ridiculous value and screws up flamer balance across the board. The primary damage is otherwise awful which is why any flamer without that debuff ends up dealing bad damage.

If you used the tank for the MG, then you were using the tank all kinds of wrong.

You use the tank for the damn cannon, with explosive shells and enough upgrades you can wipe out a base in 1 or 2 shots in most cases. Only then needing to use the MG for mop up. Add in the fact that your personal defense lasers still work while inside the tank, and you just need the cannon turret only after that. Since the PDL will clean up any biters that spawned.

The tank isn't nerfed, more like the MG was bugged or inadvertently buffed to deal double damage. Using the MG to kill bases is a waste of bullets anyways.

Been reading a lot of replies, and this is the guy that got it right.

If you're using the tank as a machine gun turret with ramming capabilities, you're doing it wrong not utilizing the tanks capabilities. My clear impression of the tank is that it's supposed to be used as an aggresive biter-base-assault, with the explosive cannon shells dealing more damage than you would need until you get artillery. The armor/health pool lets you engage biters, and occasionally ram (opposed to actively ramming into bases). Flamethrower will let you eat through the smolest biters and foliage.

Tbh i've not had MG ammo in my tank for a loooong time.

Also, with the devs focus being on encouraging production lines, i guess this change will encourage production lines of explosives and flamethrower ammo - which is a good thing.

I've run a few games where I've went tanking, and while I think that the SMG nerf is probably a good idea, I would hope that the tank gets more "longevity". While I've played through with quite a few canon upgrades and see the power of the canon, I've always found that with the extra versatility of powered armor upgrades to occupy much more of my brain time than the tank. To me the tank has traditionally been simply a "slighty more efficient way to getting rid of bases". More often than not I've ended up turret pushing for most of my base needs, because of one simple reason:

I can use turrets for both offense AND defense.

While I commend the devs for moving away from alien research for tech, the one tradeoff that was made was that I no longer really have a reason to go base hunting. The closest I've ever gotten to needing to base-hunt is when I make sure that resources are spread REAL thin and so I have to spread my base out to HUGE distances to do anything useful, but by the time I'm at that stage I have laser turrets and get to Nuke power, and it just "makes sense" to extend my grid toward the patch I want to mine, and at that point, why not just laser crawl?

I see several paths around this problem, but IMO much of this requires that things simply feel more "natural".

First of all it feels like I would do a lot more tanking if there was simply more to do with my tank. Can't I make it go faster so I don't have to resort to my car for fast transport? Maybe trailers for mass resource transport? Hell, I can carry a personal fusion reactor in my armor that gives me tons of versatility, why can't I give some love to my tank?
Can I make remotely powered resource bases more practical and intuitive? While I'm sure that technically solar powered remote mining operations is _feasible_, is it "natural"? I've never felt that way. If it feels intuitive to remotely operate mining outputs with independent power, I'd feel like I could take my tank out with a remote inventory and simply setup shop with some rail lines. Then loving my tank would gain a new significance. However, I've felt that for quite some time that remote operations where tanks are useful to clear ground are much less interesting than I would like, and so I concentrate on making sure my main is in good shape, which significantly reduces the utility of the tank....

If you used the tank for the MG, then you were using the tank all kinds of wrong.

You use the tank for the damn cannon, with explosive shells and enough upgrades you can wipe out a base in 1 or 2 shots in most cases. Only then needing to use the MG for mop up. Add in the fact that your personal defense lasers still work while inside the tank, and you just need the cannon turret only after that. Since the PDL will clean up any biters that spawned.

The tank isn't nerfed, more like the MG was bugged or inadvertently buffed to deal double damage. Using the MG to kill bases is a waste of bullets anyways.

Been reading a lot of replies, and this is the guy that got it right.

If you're using the tank as a machine gun turret with ramming capabilities, you're doing it wrong not utilizing the tanks capabilities. My clear impression of the tank is that it's supposed to be used as an aggresive biter-base-assault, with the explosive cannon shells dealing more damage than you would need until you get artillery. The armor/health pool lets you engage biters, and occasionally ram (opposed to actively ramming into bases). Flamethrower will let you eat through the smolest biters and foliage.

Tbh i've not had MG ammo in my tank for a loooong time.

Also, with the devs focus being on encouraging production lines, i guess this change will encourage production lines of explosives and flamethrower ammo - which is a good thing.

If using a perticular weapon on any vehicle is "using it wrong" I don't think that is a "good thing" at all. All weapons avalible on any vehicle (or power armor) should have a good use or be removed.

I posted in here a while ago (pg. 1), but I feel the need to provide more input given that most people seem to be suggesting the tank is, perhaps outside of it's currently +100% damage MG, pretty much a niche option at best. From my own fairly extensive experience use the tank (mostly in a 140 hr. long game in 0.15, where it and most of the rest of the combat mechanics were as they are now in the current stable 0.16), this is not true. The tank is quite powerful, though perhaps not on par with a fully kitted out Power armor Mk2 setup.

At default settings tank is very optional choise. At least I face situation at midgame I have to decide if I build a tank and attack against biters soon to get more resources or wait and develop tech to power armor. And most of the times I choose to wait because I do not like tank combat. I can make something else and give the game grind couple of hours at background and I react only to alarms. Or if I have very severe need, I attack with turret creep. I do not know if it is more fast (killed nests per minute) and it feels artificial abuse of balancing error, but it feels to be more effective and interesting. I have to make more tactical choices or something.

Especially the cannon is a ridiculous joke. It takes 3 rounds to kill a nest. It is just too boring to circle large colony hundred times and kill a nest every now and then. It should be one shot one kill against nests. If devs think it is too easy, I would prefer increasing the difficulty by adjusting biters more strong. Especially there could be worms with short range and massive damage to protect bases. But cannon should be able to kill everything with one shot. As you would except in real life against any alive thing.

If you used the tank for the MG, then you were using the tank all kinds of wrong.

You use the tank for the damn cannon, with explosive shells and enough upgrades you can wipe out a base in 1 or 2 shots in most cases. Only then needing to use the MG for mop up. Add in the fact that your personal defense lasers still work while inside the tank, and you just need the cannon turret only after that. Since the PDL will clean up any biters that spawned.

The tank isn't nerfed, more like the MG was bugged or inadvertently buffed to deal double damage. Using the MG to kill bases is a waste of bullets anyways.

Been reading a lot of replies, and this is the guy that got it right.

If you're using the tank as a machine gun turret with ramming capabilities, you're doing it wrong not utilizing the tanks capabilities. My clear impression of the tank is that it's supposed to be used as an aggresive biter-base-assault, with the explosive cannon shells dealing more damage than you would need until you get artillery. The armor/health pool lets you engage biters, and occasionally ram (opposed to actively ramming into bases). Flamethrower will let you eat through the smolest biters and foliage.

Tbh i've not had MG ammo in my tank for a loooong time.

Also, with the devs focus being on encouraging production lines, i guess this change will encourage production lines of explosives and flamethrower ammo - which is a good thing.

My issue with the tank's cannon was the cannon felt worse at destroying biter nests than the machine gun.

If you used the tank for the MG, then you were using the tank all kinds of wrong.

You use the tank for the damn cannon, with explosive shells and enough upgrades you can wipe out a base in 1 or 2 shots in most cases. Only then needing to use the MG for mop up. Add in the fact that your personal defense lasers still work while inside the tank, and you just need the cannon turret only after that. Since the PDL will clean up any biters that spawned.

The tank isn't nerfed, more like the MG was bugged or inadvertently buffed to deal double damage. Using the MG to kill bases is a waste of bullets anyways.

Been reading a lot of replies, and this is the guy that got it right.

If you're using the tank as a machine gun turret with ramming capabilities, you're doing it wrong not utilizing the tanks capabilities. My clear impression of the tank is that it's supposed to be used as an aggresive biter-base-assault, with the explosive cannon shells dealing more damage than you would need until you get artillery. The armor/health pool lets you engage biters, and occasionally ram (opposed to actively ramming into bases). Flamethrower will let you eat through the smolest biters and foliage.

Tbh i've not had MG ammo in my tank for a loooong time.

Also, with the devs focus being on encouraging production lines, i guess this change will encourage production lines of explosives and flamethrower ammo - which is a good thing.

My issue with the tank's cannon was the cannon felt worse at destroying biter nests than the machine gun.

You should seriously give it another go. You will use considerably less resources to gain more kills, and faster.

If you used the tank for the MG, then you were using the tank all kinds of wrong.

You use the tank for the damn cannon, with explosive shells and enough upgrades you can wipe out a base in 1 or 2 shots in most cases. Only then needing to use the MG for mop up. Add in the fact that your personal defense lasers still work while inside the tank, and you just need the cannon turret only after that. Since the PDL will clean up any biters that spawned.

The tank isn't nerfed, more like the MG was bugged or inadvertently buffed to deal double damage. Using the MG to kill bases is a waste of bullets anyways.

Been reading a lot of replies, and this is the guy that got it right.

If you're using the tank as a machine gun turret with ramming capabilities, you're doing it wrong not utilizing the tanks capabilities. My clear impression of the tank is that it's supposed to be used as an aggresive biter-base-assault, with the explosive cannon shells dealing more damage than you would need until you get artillery. The armor/health pool lets you engage biters, and occasionally ram (opposed to actively ramming into bases). Flamethrower will let you eat through the smolest biters and foliage.

Tbh i've not had MG ammo in my tank for a loooong time.

Also, with the devs focus being on encouraging production lines, i guess this change will encourage production lines of explosives and flamethrower ammo - which is a good thing.

If using a perticular weapon on any vehicle is "using it wrong" I don't think that is a "good thing" at all. All weapons avalible on any vehicle (or power armor) should have a good use or be removed.

What i'm trying to say is that using ONLY machinegun is using the tank wrong. The tank is best used when you combine the use of the weapons. Cannon with explosive shells ravage biter bases, with flametrhower/MG killing the biters close/chasing you.

If the tank becomes potent enough to face end-game threat, and to be on par with a MkII power armor ... then what's the point of the power armor ?
I think the tank should remain the good mid-game tool to fight biters it already is, creating a bridge between the times when you can fight biters on foot or with a car and the times you need artillery/nukes/power armor stuffed with shields and exosqueletons.

Power armor, to me, is personal equipment that remains on you 100% of the time. The tank, on the other hand, is a vehicle that you get into to go after biter bases specifically.

Power armor has a number of benefits, unrelated to its combat potential, mainly involving its ability to power and hold numerous personal devices, and to expand your inventory space. If that is not deemed enough, then I suppose the character should simply be named Tony Stark. Power Armor is basically a personal tank that you strap on, vis a vis Tony Stark’s Iron Man suits.

IMO the armors need to have, and do have, a clear progression. They get better and better at defending you, allow you to carry more and more stuff, and when applicable, have increasing space for power/powered equipment. It just seems to me that they should always be more of a secondary line of defense, however. You can wear armor inside a vehicle, and that armor is protected by the vehicle, until you get out, or the vehicle is destroyed around you. Power Armor should be worn for its other benefits, not primarily its combat potential. That’s what the tank is there for.

If you need some kind of progression, how about making the tank less structurally sound, and offering an upgrade later on? Maybe that upgraded one has slots for and can run off of Portable Fusion Generators and can carry PLD’s? Maybe PLD’s and some shields should be the Tank’s upgrade, and not the Power Armor’s upgrade, lending the Power Armor more towards utilarian rather than combat uses? Adding a few more inventory slots per armor tier, to help encourage people to upgrade?

I guess the best way to frame the overall question is this : is Power Armor meant to replace the Tank, or coexist with it?

It's worth noting that a tank shooting explosive depleted uranium shells with 2 upgrades can instakill multiple big biters. So the loss of its machinegun damage is probably not catastrophic for its viability if you're ahead in military tech. It is possible to instakill behemoth biters with infinite cannon upgrades , but that requires around 1000 rocket launches for that purpose , so not the best use of resources.

I think the lost damage per second of the tank machinegun should be compensated by a higher rate of fire. Making it go through ammo faster (not a big problem as you can carry lots in the trunk) while keeping the damage tier-appropriate - you couldn't easily down behemoths with piercing ammo.